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Meat Free Mondays at Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University students join Paul McCartney’s and Yoko Ono’s international effort to raise awareness about the impact of meat on our health and environment. [Photo credit: Erez Katsav]

A couple of weeks ago, Tel Aviv University students joined others at Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, and many other universities worldwide in a campaign – Meat Free Mondays – that demonstrates their high level of education regarding vegetarianism’s positive effect on the environment.

The meat industry is one of the most energy intensive and carbon emitting industries in the world, and so vegetarianism (or vegawarianism) is a more eco-friendly option. Even if it is for only one day of the week, as in the case of Meatless Mondays in Tel Aviv.

The global Meatless Monday campaign is led by Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, and other celebrities along with climate change scientists and public health institutions.

So what did Meatless Monday at Tel Aviv University look like?

Like hundreds of free vegetarian meals distributed to students free of charge and invitations to attend lectures on the relationship between eating meat and climate change. And what was on the vegetarian menu? Smoked tofu appetizers, seitan (wheat gluten), vegetarian shawarma, soy goulash, and an Indian legume dish.

But the initiative was not limited to that one Meatless Monday. The university cafeteria will now serve a special vegetarian dish every Monday.

Professor Dan Rabinowitz, the former president of the Israel Union of Environmental NGOs, said that “changing our eating habits, as suggested by ‘Meatfree Monday’, is the simplest and most effective way for each of us to help, quite without effort, the global campaign aimed at stopping climate change.”